Courting voters, one way or another

Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday portrayed rival Barack Obama as a talker rather than a doer who does not believe what he says on Iraq, energy and foreign trade.

"There's a big difference between talk and action . . . but if you are going to talk, you ought to mean what you say," Clinton told a cheering crowd of about 2,000 during a midday rally in Harrisburg.

Obama, who opened his Pennsylvania campaign in Bucks County, responded in an interview with The Inquirer, saying that on Iraq, Clinton was still "trying to finagle her way out of her misjudgments on the most important foreign-policy issue of our time."

He was back home in Chicago by the time he learned that he had won yesterday's Mississippi primary, the last event before Pennsylvania votes on April 22.

Clinton, on the second day of an in-state swing that concluded with a rally at Temple University, once again became the sharp-edged candidate who had attacked Obama's preparedness to be president before defeating him in Ohio and Texas last week.

In Harrisburg, she accused Obama of not being sincere about his pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq.

"My opponent said he'll have them all out in 16 months, and then one of his foreign-policy advisers says to the foreign press: 'Don't pay attention. That's just talk for the campaign,' " Clinton said.

It was a reference to a recent flap in which Samantha Power, an Obama adviser, told a newspaper in Scotland that candidates would not be bound by their campaign rhetoric in dealing with the Iraq war as president. She was forced to resign because she called Clinton a "monster" in the same interview.

Obama told The Inquirer that his commitment to a 16-month timetable was firm and unchanged.

"This notion that Sen. Clinton can twist the words of an adviser who's not even speaking in an official capacity on my behalf and try to tag them on me is the kind of politics that results in us not getting much stuff done," he said.

Clinton delivered a populist speech in Harrisburg, blasting oil companies, Wall Street hedge-fund managers, and health insurers, and vowing to make college more affordable. "We're going to have to fight to make the changes against the special interests that have dominated Washington," she said.

She drew cheer after cheer from the crowd, which included many state workers on lunch break wearing green AFSCME T-shirts. The public employees' union has endorsed Clinton.

She also criticized Obama for his visit to a Bucks County company that makes equipment that converts wind energy into electricity. She said it was hypocritical for him to talk about alternative energy after voting in 2005 for President Bush's energy bill, which gave tax breaks to oil companies.

"When he had a chance to say no to Dick Cheney and the oil companies, he voted yes," Clinton said. "I said no. He said yes."

Obama's campaign noted that the bill also included tax credits aimed at developing renewable fuels.

Even as she pressed her attacks, Clinton was forced to respond to comments by Geraldine A. Ferraro, the Democratic Party's 1984 vice presidential nominee, who said that Obama was "lucky" to be where he was.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," Ferraro told the Daily Breeze newspaper of Torrance, Calif. "And if he was a woman [of any color], he would not be in this position."

Members of the Obama campaign expressed outrage at Ferraro's comments and called on Clinton to strip her of any role in her campaign. Ferraro has raised money for her fellow New Yorker.

"When you wink and nod at offensive statements," said Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, "you're really telling your supporters that anything goes."

Clinton said she disagreed with Ferraro's characterization. "It is regrettable that any of our supporters on both sides, because we've both had that experience, say things that kind of veer off into the personal," Clinton said, according to Associated Press. "We ought to keep this on the issues."

With Clinton and Obama both in the eastern part of the state and former President Bill Clinton touring in the west, the campaign for Pennsylvania was fully joined yesterday.

Jane Petermann attended the Harrisburg rally and said she agreed with Clinton that Obama was too great a risk. "It's kind of scary, putting someone in office that is untested," the Lancaster resident said. "Our country is in a lot of trouble, and we need someone who can get us out of it."

A new poll by Susquehanna Polling for Triad Strategies, a Harrisburg-based lobbying group, had Clinton at 45 percent and Obama at 31 percent, with the rest undecided or not supporting anyone.

Obama's one stop was in Fairless Hills at the factory of Gamesa USA, a Spanish wind-energy firm, located inside the old U.S. Steel Fairless Works.

After a tour of the facility, during which he autographed a windmill blade that was more than 100 feet long, the Illinois senator held a town-hall meeting with about 300 people, most of them Gamesa employees.

In brief opening remarks, Obama talked about his plans to invest $150 billion over 10 years to create green-energy jobs. He praised Gamesa and other companies for "turning Bucks County into a center of green jobs in America."

He said of Pennsylvania: "The challenges people are facing here aren't that different than the ones I'm hearing about as I travel all around this country."

With his voice echoing off the ceiling and walls of the cavernous facility, he took a series of questions covering the cost of living, school violence, the role of labor unions, and illegal immigration.

Although he didn't deliver his trademark, stem-winding speech, his listeners said they were satisfied.

"He was my candidate to begin with, and he was better than I expected," said Beth Rovito of Hatboro, a recruiter for Gamesa. "He's one of us; he's not one of them. He's not a politician."

The long campaign day concluded with Clinton's evening rally at Temple's McGonigle Hall, where she roused the crowd of 3,000 with calls to end tax breaks for job-exporting corporations, extend health insurance to all, and break free from dependence on imported oil.

She did not repeat her earlier attacks on Obama, saying simply that she had the "experience and understanding" to serve in troubled times.

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